Rover Celebrity House Call

Lanny CLark came to the shop today to help wire up the 200TDi. He’s done several of these conversions and does some cool tricks mating the TDi engine harness to the Series harness. It’s amazing to watch him work, he knows exactly where everything goes, I’m convinced he could do this in his sleep……..no schematics, no leafing through manuals……just decades of knowledge at work…..Priceless!! Lanny just completed the truck in the photo above and is putting on some break-in miles. It’s a 1962 109 Station Wagon with a 200TDi and several custom touches throughout……it’s headed to South America.

Yep, thought so. I remember those long care free days spent working on the truck all day with groups of friends popping in and out to help each other and a good flow of beer……..would you like to swap your workshop for a wife and a few children??? 😀

(the way the wife is feeling after reading this I may have those days back quite soon 😉 )

BTW what size are those tyres on the bar? 7.5×16? Are you not tempted to go larger as you have the heavy duty chassis with the extra height on the leaf mounts? My wife runs 255/85R16’s (33″) with a stock civvy chassis, you’d probably get 255/100’s on there quite easily and you have the strong axles to handle them too.

They are Michelin XZL 7.5×16………I like the traditional skinny tire look, and on this truck I really have no choice. The axles are quite wide (we have no idea what they came off), so anything wider than the 7.5’s will put the tires outside of the body………not a good look, and I REALLY don’t like fender flares.

I did wonder about those axles as I was drooling over them, they look like they could be forward control axles. I think they extended the axles to allow better stability on the IIB although I’m no expert on the FC models.

I also do not like flares on Series, in fact I hate them but I’m a sucker for big tyres (well tall tyres anyway) so thankfully our trucks have the narrow axles as the 255/85’s sit nicely level with the wing skin rather than sticking out and that is fitted to modulars. Had they been fitted to wolf wheels they’d be a good inch inboard but then I’d have no turning circle …